


In the Curs'd Depth of Night

by Stormvoël (BushRat8)



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Curse of the Black Pearl, Hallucinations, Multi, Visions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-18
Updated: 2018-08-18
Packaged: 2019-06-29 04:17:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15721815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BushRat8/pseuds/Stormvo%C3%ABl
Summary: Late at night, the Aztec Curse speaks to Captain Barbossa, telling him over and over again of what he's lost.  But a defiant Barbossa rails back at it, doing whatever he can to cling to the one memory that keeps him human.





	In the Curs'd Depth of Night

**Author's Note:**

> When Barbossa says that he "feels nothing," he doesn't mean literally nothing, ever. He does feel what is obligatory to captain the ship, like the quill in his hand as he writes in the logbook, likewise a sword when he fights, but he can't feel what appeals to his emotions — "the wind in my face or the spray of the sea" — and as for sex… it's like what the Curse does re eating and drinking: he's always horny and ready for action, but he can't feel what's happening, derives no pleasure from it, and worst of all, can't finish. The Curse is very nasty that way.

 

 

 

 

-oOo-

 

 

 

 

 

There's not a moment when Barbossa isn't thankful for the dark, smoky cabin where he can hide away from his crew.  It's not that, otherwise, they might stumble upon him crying, for undead men have no tears to physically shed, but one close look into his blue eyes — under whatever light and whether his face is made of flesh or rot-draped bone — will show them a soul so anguished that he dare not display his true feelings before them.  
  
Over time, the Aztec Curse has taken each man by degrees, according to what he valued most in his life.  There are those who loved music and the laughter of women, who now hear only the captain's bellowed orders and other purely necessary things.  Some who enjoyed the scents of flowers and perfumed ladies of pleasure are aware of nothing but the odor of decay and men's unwashed bodies;  others are forced to view their world in shades of grey, for all color has gone from it and they have not even the blue of tide and sky.  At sea, Barbossa sees and hears in normal fashion because as captain he needs to, but ashore, these senses skew and leave him in an ugly sepia world with painful, off-pitch sounds ringing in his ears.    
  
Not one of them can now taste anything, but for Barbossa, this lack is a very particular, heartrending torment, and not just because it subjects him to starvation and thirst.  Not only apples, but sweet oranges and sharp lemons and limes are lost to him, as is his favorite dish of peppered chicken, offered by the hand of a woman he fears he may never see again;  and even if he did, how could she possibly want him the way he is now?  He remembers with painful clarity all the meals she prepared, and the smile with which she served them, but their savor has vanished from his memory, and with them, her warmth and distinctively feminine fragrance, gone no matter how he tries to breathe it in.  He recalls what it was — rosemary, clove, and a hint of salty skin — but they're just names, nothing more.  He might as well be an illiterate man trying to read the letters that spell them out, for all that they make any sense.  
  
The apples are especially meaningful to Barbossa because he always liked the pretty way his young lady presented them on the table: carved into wedges and sprinkled with lemon juice, accompanied by a dish of honey to dip them in.  
  
Apple.  Lemon.  Honey.  Sweet and tangy.  Meaningless.  
  
The scent of rosemary and clove and hard-working woman, so frustratingly out of reach.  
  
When he saw her last, his Miss Sophia, she was a ripe and lovely young creature on the threshold of surrendering to him and Barbossa wants so badly to weep for what they almost had, but the Curse won't let him.  The harder he tries to remember her, the more the Curse tries to pull her distant, using the memory of her to hurt him in the most unspeakable ways it can.  
  
_Years have passed_ , the Curse taunts him,  _so why should she wait for you?  Think on this:  that serving maid you wanted so much:  she's no doubt been given as wife to some uncouth lout by Old Nan, forced to lie with a man who doesn't care if he disgusts her, as long as her belly grows large with the brats she carries for him._   Of everything, that thought's the worst and Barbossa cannot stand it:  imagining his kind and gentle Sophie with anyone else but him.  
  
But,  "Ye shall not have her, Curs'd Moon, an' ye shall not tell me she wouldn't wait!"  he grits through his teeth one evening, glaring daggers at the cold light flickering through the cabin's leaded windows, turning his hands to dry bones.  "For certain I know that m' young Sophia surely deserves better'n me, but no matter;  I know 'tis me she were wantin', so her desires be th' ones I'll follow.  One day I'll be rid of ye, Curse, an' then I know where I'll be goin'…"  Barbossa moves back into the shadows, out of the moonlight, a fleshly man once more.  "So torture me all ye like wi' thoughts of her cryin' 'neath some stranger!"  he grates.  "I'll hold t' her an' not let her go, an' there bain't a goddamn thing ye can do 'bout it!"  
  
In the face of his determination, the Curse redoubles its effort to torment him, disordering what little sleep he manages to get and dictating the most awful dreams it can possibly give.  _If you won't listen to what I tell you,_ it laughs, _then watch it and let it be her voice you hear._  
  
Barbossa comes close to screaming at the visions the Curse shows him:  a stone-faced Sophie compelled to submit repeatedly to the attentions of a husband she neither chose nor wanted, then shrieking in pain as she tries to push his child from her body.  It calls to mind his childhood, when he wouldn't stay put at his aunt's during his mother's repeated confinements.  He'd creep to the cottage window, transfixed by the sight of her supine form, terrified by all the blood, and frightened to death at the sound of her wails.  And his Sophie, now… poor Sophie… "Stop it!"  he shouts into his pillow.  "Tear me apart with whate'er else ye want, but she ain't got nothin' t' do wi' yer fuckin' Aztec gold, so leave her out of it!"  
  
The Curse snickers at him and shows him a tearful Sophie, turning her face from an infant got from a man she never wanted, while the midwife rips open her shift, plops the baby down on her stomach, and forces her to nurse him.  _What, Barbossa, did you think it was your child she'd rather have swelling in her womb or suckling at her breast?_  
  
"Aye!"  he replies angrily.  "M' Sophie wanted me then, an' once I'm quit of this hell I be in, she'll want me now, an' in time, p'raps, she might give me a son or a pretty daughter."  
  
_Dream on, you curs'd fool;  no good woman would ever want you.  Best you'll ever have is a poxy whore, and even then, you can fuck her 'til doomsday, but I'll see that you'll never spend yourself again!_    
  
It's what Barbossa found out long ago:  that part of the Curse's cruelty lies in exactly how selectively it makes him incapable.  It forces him into a state of perpetual high arousal, with an always-stiff cock that works excessively well, but it won't let him feel the softness or wetness or warmth of the woman he's holding, makes sure that he can't smell or taste her;  and, with his senses deprived of everything that makes such an encounter exciting, there's nothing to propel him to climax, leaving him even more inflamed at the end than he was when he began.    
  
He's thrashed more than one whore when the frustration became too much.  
  
As with the attempts to eat and drink, Barbossa finally gave up trysts with the working ladies as making him feel worse than they were worth;  instead, he holds fast to every detail he can recall about Sophie and obstinately refuses to let the Curse take those memories away.  Let it try to make him think she's wife to another;  it's naught but shadows when he knows the love he saw in her eyes.  Let it laugh as it shows her as mother to a babe not his own;  he's known since he last saw her that if any woman wanted to bear his children, she'd be the one.  
  
Listening to his thoughts, the Curse's laughter is insane.  _You're a dry husk, Barbossa;  you're nothing but bones. Try getting yourself a sprat with your serving maid when you have no living seed to spill inside her!  Stand in the moonlight before her and watch her run screaming from you!_  
  
_Nay!_   Barbossa thinks.  _Nay!  Miss Sophia be th' one dear creature on earth who'd love me even like this!_  
  
He knows it's true.  He needs it to be true.  
  
The moon is going down and the Curse's voice is fading;  still, it has to take one last shot.  _You've been gone for years, Barbossa;  what makes you think she'd wait for you?  Every year you called on her, and then you vanished.  Why should she think you're anything but a man who wanted her virtue and nothing more?_  
  
"If I wanted t' snatch Miss Sophia's virtue away wi' no kindness nor carin', I could have, but she weren't ne'er a whore!"  Barbossa snarls.  "She cared for me, an' gave me welcome an' succour when I needed it, more'n she gave t' any other.  Her heart be mine, as mine be hers, now an' always, an' no matter what a misery ye make of m' life, ye'll not take that away, never!!"  
  
The moon sinks and the first light of dawn pinks the sky.  
  
It's been years since Barbossa's had a good night's sleep untroubled by the nagging voice of the Aztec Curse, and this hasn't been one of them;  he lives in a state of permanent exhaustion, and he's dog-tired now.  But as always, he's happy to have defeated the Curse for another night;  to have made plain what his feelings are and that the Curse can't touch them no matter how ugly the things it shows him or what it says.  "Ohhh, Sophie, Sophie,"  he sighs as he sits up and straightens his clothing, ready for another day.  "Ye've no idea, but we're only three coins short of what we need, an' then I'll come back t' ye an' be a normal man again.  Meantime, I'm holdin' tight t' ye, m' darlin'.  Jus' three more coins, an' I'll come home."

  
  
  
-oOo-  FIN  -oOo-


End file.
